OQL support in the HeapWalker

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With the arrival of the NetBeans 6.7M2 release the HeapWalker is enhanced with the OQL (stands for Object Query Language) support for analysing the heap-dump contents.

The OQL specifications are particularly complex and there is no complete implementation of the specifications yet. What more, there are various implementations enhancing the original OQL with their own additions. For the sakes of compatibility the jHat OQL implementation was chosen as the query engine for the HeapWalker. This decision also makes it possible to enhance the analytical capabilities of the OQL by custom JavaScript functions.

The actual OQL implementation comprises of the query engine and the visual console embedded within the HeapWalker. The visual console offers basic OQL language syntax highlighting and code completion. It also provides a contextual help linking to the rather exhausting jHat OQL documentation explaining the basics of the OQL as well as providing many working examples. The query results are bound back to the rest of the HeapWalker for the ease of navigation.